After my kids were born, I shelved my charcoals and brushes. I believed I didn't have the time to dedicate to detailed craftwork. This painting revealed to me that time to create always exists. It exists in thirty minutes one Saturday, two weeks later an hour. The in between hours are spent "creating" in other orbits - motherhood, wifery, reader, friend, food burner.
Last spring, I read a Ghanan artist's description of her sculpture. She said it represented the various pieces that make up a woman's being. The sculpture was almost six feet in height and had been cut from a debarked fallen log. The interior of the log had been hollowed out and embedded with metal plates. The rigid lines of the metal pierced the wooden silhouette forming a shape that was curvy and, simultaneously, faceted.
The artist's simple statement was penetrating. There are minutes I'm overwhelmed by the many roles I lead and, conversely, hours that I bathe pleasurably in life's meandering river. Women aren't alone in multifacetation. Men, too, are a collection of parts- the employee, the boss, the lover, the dad, the friend, the past, the present, the future. We're all a kaleidoscope of experiences and roles blending into a life.
I wanted to create my own interpretation of her words. The result is the painting above. I began by researching how to draw an image of a kaleidoscope. My "how to" searches led to images of mandalas.
Mandalas, I learned, are meditation aids. They are intricate designs encased in a circle. The meditator focuses on the lines and shapes of the mandala, drawing herself deeper into meditation. I loved the idea of blending meditation into the image of the woman by painting a mandala in the background.
I am grateful for the wealth of knowledge-sharing that so many bloggers provided. Paying it forward or backward, I've shared the mandala template that I created to make my painting. Feel free to use it for your own kaleidoscopic pursuits.
Namaste.
No comments:
Post a Comment